He jumps off the stage dramatically, and then shouts, “Number One, make me love you.”
Number 1, a mousy blonde who identifies herself as Marie F, climbs the stairs beside the stage and slouches to a microphone. She looks up through her bangs toward the back of the auditorium, where it says in large purple block letters WILDKITS ROCK. She proceeds to prove otherwise with a stunningly bad rendition of a Kelly Clarkson ballad.
“Oh, my God,” Jane says under her breath. “Oh, God. Make it end.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I mumble. “This chick’s a lock for the role of Janey. She sings off-key, loves corporate pop, and dates bitchsquealers.” She elbows me.
Number 2 is a boy, a husky lad with hair too long to be considered normal but too short to be considered long. He sings a song by a band apparently called Damn Yankees—Jane knows them, natch. I don’t know how the original sounds, but this guy’s howler-monkey a cappella rendition of it leaves a lot to be desired. “He sounds like someone just kicked him in the nuts,” Jane says; to which I respond, “If he doesn’t stop soon, someone will.” By Number 5, I’m wishing for a mediocre rendition of something inoffensive like “Over the Rainbow,” and I suspect Tiny is, too, from the way his peppy, “That was great! We’ll get back to you.” has devolved into a, “Thanks. Next?”
The songs vary from jazz standards to boy band covers, but all the performers have one thing in common: they sort of suck. I mean, certainly, not everyone sucks in the same way, and not everyone sucks equally, but everyone sucks at least a little. I’m stunned when my lunch companion Ethan, Number 19, proves to be the best singer so far, singing a song from some musical called Spring Awakening. The dude can belt.
“He could play you,” Jane says. “If he grew his hair out and developed a bad attitude.”
“I don’t have a bad attitude—”
“—is the kind of thing that people with bad attitudes say.” Jane smiles.
I see a couple potential Janes over the next hour. Number 24 sings a weirdly good sticky-sweet version of a song from Guys and Dolls. The other girl, Number 43, has straight bleached hair streaked with blue and sings “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” Something about the distance between children’s songs and blue hair seems pretty Janeish to me.
“I vote for her,” Jane says as soon as the girl gets to the second Mary.
The last auditionee is a diminutive, large-eyed creature named Hazel who sings a song from Rent. After she’s finished, Tiny runs up onto the stage to thank everyone, and to say how brilliant they all were, and how impossibly hard this will be, and how callbacks will be posted the day after tomorrow. Everyone files out past us, and then finally Tiny slouches up the aisle.
“You’ve got your work cut out for you,” I tell him.
He makes a dramatic gesture of futility. “We did not see a lot of future Broadway stars,” he acknowledges.
Gary comes up and says, “I liked numbers six, nineteen, thirty-one, and forty-two. The others, well,” and then Gary puts his hand to his chest and begins to sing, “Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high / The sound of singing Wildkits, makes me want to die.”
“Jesus,” I say. “You’re like a real singer. You sound like Pavarotti.”
“Well, except he’s a baritone,” Jane says, her music pretension apparently extending even to the world of opera.
Tiny snaps the fingers of one hand excitedly while pointing at Gary. “You! You! You! For the part of Kaleb. Congratulations.”
“You want me to play a fictionalized version of my own ex-boyfriend?” Gary asks. “I think not.”
“Then Phil Wrayson! I don’t care. Pick your part. My God, you sing better than all of them.”
“Yes!” I say. “I cast you.”
“But I’d have to kiss a girl,” he says. “Ew.” I don’t remember my character kissing any girls, and I start to ask Tiny about it, but he cuts me off, saying, “I’ve been in rewrites.” Tiny flatters Gary some more and then he agrees to play the part of me, and honestly, I’ll take it. As we walk up the aisle on the way out of the cafeteria, Gary turns to me, cocking his head and squinting. “What’s it like to be Will Grayson? I need to know what it’s like from the inside.” He’s laughing, but then he also seems to be waiting for an answer. I always thought that being Will Grayson meant being me, but apparently not. The other Will Grayson is also Will Grayson, and now Gary will be, too.
“I just try to shut up and not care,” I say.
“Such stirring words.” Gary smiles. “I will base your character upon the attributes of the boulders on the lake-shore: silent, apathetic, and—considering how little they exercise—surprisingly chiseled.” Everybody laughs, except Tiny, who’s texting. As we exit the hallway, I see Ethan standing against the Wildkit trophy stand, his backpack on. I walk up to him and say, “Not bad today,” and he smiles and says, “I just hope I’m not too hot to play you.” He smiles. I smile back, even though he seems a little serious. “See you on Friday at Clint’s?” he asks.
“Yeah, maybe,” I say. He adjusts the backpack over one shoulder and takes off with a nod. Behind me, I hear Tiny dramatically plead, “Someone tell me it will be okay!”
“It’ll be okay,” Jane says. “Mediocre actors rise to great material.”
Tiny takes a deep breath, shakes some thought out of his mind, and says, “You’re right. Together they will be greater than the sum of their parts. Fifty-five people tried out for my play! My hair looks amazing today! I got a B on an English paper!” His phone chirps. “And I just got a text from my new favorite Will Grayson. You’re totally right, Jane: everything’s coming up Tiny.”
Chapter twelve
It starts when i get home from chicago. i already have twenty-seven texts from tiny on my phone. and he has twenty-seven texts from me. that took up most of the train ride. the rest of the time, i figured out what i needed to do the moment i walked through the door. because if isaac’s nonexistence is going to weigh me down, i have to let go of some other things in order not to crash right into the ground. i no longer give a f**k. i mean, i didn’t think i gave a f**k before. but that was amateur not-giving-a-fuck. this is stop-at-nothing, don’t-give-a-fuck freedom.